a great religious question, the submission to a solemn
ordinance of God. Yes, Marriage is a divine institution. It is not of
earthly origin, though it is often prostituted to earthly uses. It is a
God-made arrangement for human development and happiness, and woe be to
him who defiles it with sensuous abuses. It is before the Church, before
any of the solemn ordinances of God's house, the primal decree of the
Father for his human children. To degrade or abuse the Marriage covenant
is blasphemy, irreverence, sacrilegious wickedness. If one would enter
the portals of the church bowed in reverence to God, much more should he
thus enter the sanctuary of Marriage. If he should sit reverently at the
table of the Lord's Supper, much more should he sit thus in the bower of
the hymeneal life. If he should bow his head in solemn meekness in the
baptismal rite, much more should he bend lowly in this relation. If he
should kneel in pious prayer before the throne of grace, so he should
humble himself before God at the life-union altar. There is no more
serious step in life, none more important, and none that should be more
religiously taken.

In this view of the subject, what a sad picture does the world present!
How trifling, giddy, thoughtless! Among the multitudes who marry, how
few marry in the light of wisdom and under the sanction of religion!
Worldliness moves a great multitude in the formation of this union.
Profit, gain, standing! These are mighty things. Principle, virtue,
religion, happiness, must be sacrificed on the altar of worldly
ambition. Woman becomes a base creature by thus pandering to earthly
ends. Then worse than this, still greater multitudes are prompted to
this union by sensuous desires--base animalism. Oh, to what a sink of
iniquity, what a pool of pollution, what a stagnant pit of moral
rottenness is the Marriage relation sunk by the unhallowed and unbridled
sensuality of thousands who enter it! If there is any place in the world
where the voice of God should be heard ringing in pealing thunder-tones
the commands of virtue and religion, it is in the seclusion of the
Marriage relation. Men, and women, too, ought to look to Marriage with a
profounder respect and a higher purpose. It is a holy institution. To
degrade it is wicked and brings the most bitter unhappiness. If I should
induce a single young woman to look more reverently upon the life-union,
to regard it in its moral and religious aspects, and deter